Lockdown
Lockdown is a 6th season episode of House which first aired on April 12, 2010. This episode sees Jennifer Morrison reprising her role as Dr. Allison Cameron for the last time except the series' final episode, Everybody Dies, and marks the series' directorial debut of Hugh Laurie. In a change of pace, the “patient of the week” format is abandoned and the episode deals with one main plot and four separate sub-plots. When a newborn goes missing, the entire hospital is locked down, trapping all the doctors where they were at the time. Foreman and Taub are stuck in the file room, wonder if there is a pharmaceutical explanation behind House's personality, and take the opportunity to go through the hospital‘s confidential files on the staff‘s credentials. Wilson and Thirteen find themselves in the cafeteria playing truth or dare. House is stuck in a room with a dying patient (guest star Strathairn) whose case he refused to take and finds out the patient did have a rare condition that showed prosaic symptoms. Finally, Chase is stuck with a visiting Cameron, who‘s there to finalize their divorce. In the middle of all this Cuddy tries to help locate the missing infant. Recap A new baby girl is delivered and her parents decide what to name her as her older brother chimes in and complains he is hungry. The new father returns with the food and finds his family asleep. However, he left the baby in a nearby crib and it's no longer there. He wakes the mother who looks shocked. Chase is shown jumping down the stairs whistling. He goes up to the front desk and asks, "You paged?" The nurse looks over rudely while Chase follows her stare. When he sees who it is he has a confused and surprised face on. Cameron is standing there waiting for him. She asks worridly,"Can we talk...somewhere private?" Cuddy puts the hospital on alert as they discuss where the baby might be. She meets with the father, who said he wasn't out of the room for more than twenty minutes. She tells him that the baby bracelet has an alarm in it that would have gone off if it had left the hospital. She puts the hospital on lockdown and tells everyone not to move until they find the baby. Cameron asks Chase why he hasn't signed the divorce papers and he says he's been too busy. He says he won't sign the papers until they discuss their marriage. She leaves the papers on the check-up room's table and leaves the room when she hears an announcement. It states that everyone is to stay where they are and keep out of the corridors until the lockdown is over. House tries to walks out into the hallway and gets caught by a security guard. The guard starts to argue but House interrupts and says,"Yeah, I know." He then goes into a patient's room. A detective is questioning the mother, who is now frantic. However, she can't move because of her stitches. Wilson and Thirteen are in the cafeteria and, with nothing else to do, begin playing truth or dare. The obstetrics nurse is questioned and denies doing anything. She does say the brother may have pinched the baby when he was allowed to hold it. Foreman finds Taub in the file room. Foreman was looking for Taub because he was supposed to get a file and took two hours. However, Taub has found something interesting - staff credential files that are there to be digitized and they‘re not being guarded. Taub wants to go through them, but Foreman will only let him look at House's file. House finds himself in a room with a patient. The patient is on morphine, but he's still awake. House figures out he has ischemic cardiomyopathy and blood isn't reaching his abdomen where the pain is - intestinal hyperprofusion. The patient is near death. The patient realizes it's Dr. House. He had tried to get him to take his case. He tells him it started as tooth pain and no one figured out anything was wrong with his heart until he had a heart attack. He asks for a bedpan so he can vomit. House tells him that he only takes about 1 in 20 cases and a lot of the people he turns down die. Wilson asks Thirteen ‘truth or dare‘, Thirteen says truth, and Wilson asks if she's ever had a threesome. Thirteen says she's never had a threesome, but tricks him into asking another question by saying, "You didn't ask me about a foursome." Wilson proceeds to ask if she indeed was involved in a foursome to which she replys "No." and that by Wilson asking her two questions in a row, she now gets to ask him two questions in a row as well. By manipulating Wilson, she's clearly winning the game, just like she predicted she would. Cuddy suggests to the mother that the brother might have done something. She admits he's been getting into fights at school. Chase is stuck in the check-up room with Cameron. They start talking about their break-up and why it even happened in the first place. Taub finds about thirty malpractice cases in House's file, as well as a botched brain biopsy and a loss of 4 litres of blood from a penisectomy. However, when they look closer, they find all the patients are named "Lisa Cuddy" - it's clear House was just making up things for his file to tick off Cuddy. Foreman says that he, once and for all, knows how to get into House's head. Foreman pulls out a bottle of Vicodin from his pocket that he had just confiscated them from a drug seeker in the clinic but hadn‘t turned in yet, and they decide to take some. Taub initially decides to take one pill, but with a smile, Foreman says (referring to House), "One? I believe he wears a larger size." and Taub and Foreman both take a couple of pills each. House notes the patient doesn't have any cards or flowers. The patient says he was a classics professor at Princeton University. House offers to let him increase his morphine dose. However, the patient doesn't want to let him off the hook, and he figures House is the one who wants to be in a drug induced haze. With helicopters outside, Thirteen says that her father was okay with her coming out as bisexual. Wilson denies dating anyone. Thirteen tries to avoid a question about Foreman and Wilson tells her to show her breasts to Taub. Cuddy is talking to the brother, who admits he hates his new sister. However, he denies moving or hiding her. The patient realizes House is in pain. House tells him that he gave up narcotics for ibuprofen, but the ibuprofen is in his office. The patient also finds that House is avoiding a test to find out why his pain is migrating. After the patient asks if House’s pain is about a woman, House realizes he's hoping a woman he likes comes to see him. The patient wonders what time it is, and when House wonders why he wants to know the time, he finally gives in and tells him. Taub and Foreman are in a haze lying on the floor. Taub manages to get on his feet, then Foreman does. Foreman complains he can‘t feel his face. Foreman tells Taub to hit him (like he always wanted to) and when he doesn't, he hits Taub instead. Taub laughs and hits him back. Taub finds Foreman's credentials file in Foreman’s bag and realizes Foreman was down there to get his own file. He snatches the file and runs away. Foreman chases after him. Cameron agrees to talk to Chase. He wants to know if she ever loved him. He points out that the only reason they first slept together was because she was high. Cameron argues that it was her emotions that led to that. After, she refused to let it go beyond sex (Cameron's argument is that she was falling for him and didn't want to), and finally, she found the ring Chase was going to propose to her with and tells him later on that she didn't want him to propose to her because she couldn’t give up on the idea of having her dead husband‘s baby. She then postponed the wedding and almost called it off ("I got cold feet, I'm not proud," is Cameron's response). When he starts talking about her dead husband, she becomes angry. They both begin to argue furiously and Chase finally cries, "Did you ever love me?" Cameron immediately yells back "I don't know!" and suddenly covers her face with her hands. Chase thanks her for finally telling him and goes to stand at the other end of the room, leaving Cameron in tears. Wilson won't talk about his love life, so Thirteen tells him to steal a dollar from the cashier's till. Taub finds out that Foreman was on academic probation at Johns Hopkins Medical School for faking a lab result. Taub realizes that Foreman was trying to destroy it before it was digitized. Foreman admits that he was trying to beat everyone because he didn't feel he deserved to be at Hopkins or any good school. Taub finally figures out that Foreman is trying to destroy the records because he doesn't feel he should be working at Princeton-Plainsboro either. However, Foreman turns the tables - he finds Taub's file. He runs and Taub chases him. House calls the patient pathetic for waiting for his lost love. The patient says it's his daughter, who he left when she was six after his wife forced him out for having an affair with a student. He only married his wife because of the child. He wants to call her when she gets home at 9 p.m. so he needs to know what time it is. He wants to know House's secrets. House says he generally likes being alone, but he did find someone who made him feel better. However, she left. Wilson tries to con the cashier off the cash register, and finally does. When she goes back to the kitchen, he manages to get the till open and steals a dollar. However, the alarm goes off, waking everyone in the cafeteria. He puts the bill back on the register. Chase admits to Cameron he feels better because if she never loved him, he didn't do anything wrong. Cameron states that she doesn't know why she said that she didn't love him when she did. Chase walks up to her and hugs her. Cameron, who's still crying, says that she always messes up her life. She then claims that she's the one who’s unfixable, not Chase. They apologize to each other and Chase goes to sign the divorce papers. Thirteen admits to Wilson that she never told her father about her bisexuality or Huntington's disease. She admits that when her father is over, she doesn't spend much time with him. However, she points out that Wilson also suppresses his social life for the benefit of House - he even bought a bigger place when he moved in. Wilson finally admits he was coy about his current love life because he is trying to reconnect with his first wife, Sam Carr. They reconnected on a social network and she's recently been divorced again. Thirteen tells him it's not about House - he's afraid its going to get serious too fast. Chase, who is now leaning against the wall on the other side of the room while Cameron is sitting in a chair with her legs bent up to her chest and her head resting on her knees, says that he loved it when Cameron would put her arm around him in the middle of the night without even waking up. He also says that he liked the way she stood up to her father. Cameron admits that she misses the dance classes they took for their wedding and how she knows that he's never going to hold her like that again. Chase walks over to get his phone from his lab coats pocket, then he plays "Alison" by Elvis Costello. He sets the phone down on the examination table, walks over to Cameron, and puts his hand out for her to take it. She gets out of the chair, takes his hand and they start dancing. Cameron rests her head on Chase's shoulder while they dance closely together. Chase tells Cameron that he will miss the dance lessons too. Taub has impeccable credentials. At 26, he was published in the New England Journal of Medicine, having completed the lab work the year earlier. As a plastic surgeon, he led a group to fix cleft palates in Bangladesh. Foreman says it's probably the best credential file in the hospital. Taub tells him he would switch out with Foreman in a second. When Taub was in med school, he wanted to be someone like House. Now he works for House and others who are younger than he is. He's on the down side of his career while Foreman is still rising. Cuddy reports to the parents there is no news. The mother asks Cuddy if she has kids. When Cuddy says she adopted, the mother tells Cuddy she adopted the brother right after she and her husband got married. She's afraid she will never love the brother as much as their new daughter. Cuddy goes to get some tissues in the bathroom and finds something strange - there are 8 towels in the bathroom instead of the usual 4. She wants the logs for the housekeeping staff. However, when she talks to the station nurse she realizes something is wrong - she has no emotional affect. She takes a closer look and finds symptoms of a seizure. She realizes the nurse has probably been having partial complex seizures all day. As a result, she would seem to be doing her duties, but with no memory of what she did and no perception of what she was doing. She may have taken the baby out of the room without even realizing it. While still dancing, Cameron and Chase both kiss but then Cameron pulls away and walks to the door as if to leave. However, instead of turning the door knob, she locks it. She turns around and leans on the door. She then looks at Chase with seductive smirk. Chase then realizes what she means. He rushes over and they embrace. House tells the patient it's 9 p.m. House picks up the phone and holds it out to him. He looks at it and takes the phone. He calls his daughters number, but he only reaches her answering machine. He hangs up, saying she must be running late. House says that he doesn't look surprised, like he anticipated that this would happen. He admits that's the case, but he likes hearing his daughter’s voice. He says he was never around when his daughter needed him, and he can’t expect her to be there for him. House redials and tells him to tell his daughter what he needs to tell her. He dials her again and this time leaves a message. He tells her while in tears, "Gracie...This is…your father. I love you" then hangs up. Cuddy and the obstetrics nurse start searching the laundry room. Cuddy asks the nurse, "Aren't there suppose to be 2 laundry carts here?" She find the other laundry cart in the hallway, digs through it, and finds the perfectly healthy baby. It starts crying when she picks it up, but soon settles down. She returns the baby to its family. A guard rattles the door handle of the room that Cameron and Chase are in. The guard states,"Hello, is anybody in there. The lockdown is over." The camera focuses on the door then moves to the examination table revealing that they slept together. Cameron is cuddled up to Chase with her arm on his chest and her head on his shoulder while Chase has his arm around her and his other arm behind his head. Cameron says to Chase with a deep breath and a laugh,"I guess I should go." Wilson calls Sam and asks her for dinner. Thirteen admits she was lying all night except for the part where she said he should call who he's dating. Taub and Foreman put their files back and agree not to tell anyone. Taub goes back to get the patient file they were looking for. However, instead he tears out the page in Foreman’s file with the one flaw on it and feeds it to the shredder. The patient is ready for more morphine. House increases the dose. The security guard comes in to tell him the lockdown is over. House tells the patient he's sorry he didn't take his case. The patient is sorry he didn't as well. The patient says his daughter was the cutest six-year-old girl he ever saw and then lapses into unconsciousness. Thirteen approaches Taub who is halfway out the front door of the hospital. He says to her "Interesting night". Thirteen then fulfills her dare from Wilson when they played truth-or-dare while stuck in the cafeteria and flashes her breasts at Taub while walking out the door that he was holding open. Taub then states, "interesting” again and leaves. At the end of the episode, the hospital‘s Latin motto appears above the door, "Omnes te moriturum amant," - "Everyone loves you when you are about to die". Major Events *Cameron brings the divorce papers that Chase never signed despite their long separation *House shows empathy for a dying patient whose case he previously rejected *Taub and Foreman secretly invade the House's file, only to realize that House has already altered the information before they got their hands on it *Taub and Foreman decide to get into House's shoes by trying Vicodin, only to realize that they made a mistake as both of them only ended up feeling extremely numb. * We learn that Wilson is considering getting back together with his first wife Sam Carr *Cuddy is once again shown having a "House moment" before finally rescuing the infant. *Cameron admits that she has been a mess from the start before finally letting go of the anger that she held on Chase for choosing to stay at the hospital *Chase finally signs the divorce papers, confirming the end of his marriage with Cameron, but the two leave each other on a friendly note. *Foreman and Taub both confess that they were trying to take advantage of the lockdown to find their hidden files so that they could destroy any bad records in them. *Foreman changes his mind and decides to leave his files intact, but Taub proceeds to destroy the one bad mark on Foreman’s file. Title The title refers to what Cuddy puts the hospital in after the baby goes missing. This causes the characters to all be locked in to one room and make some realizations about themselves and one another. Trivia & Cultural References *Odysseus is the mythical hero of Homer’s Odyssey. *Alison is from Elvis Costello’s album My Aim Is True, released in 1977. *Bangladesh is a populous country to the east of India. *The concert Taub refers to is The Concert for Bangladesh, held in New York City in 1971, which was organized by George Harrison in order to raise money for refugee relief. If Taub and the actor playing him are the same age, however, Taub would have been about six at the time it was held, probably too young to have understood what it was about. * Mario Kart: Double Dash!! is a racing game for the Nintendo Game Cube, released in 2003 * Fight Club was a 1996 novel that was made into a film in 1999 * The episode's director of photography Gale Tattersall decided to try using Canon EOS 5D Mark II cameras to film the scenes showing the new baby. The 5D is usually only used for shooting still pictures despite the fact it can record video. However, the cameras worked so well that by Everybody Dies, it was the only camera used to film the episode. * We get a quick glimpse of House's medical file **Name: House, Gregory M.D. ** Address: 519 Morehall St. ** Home Phone: 609-555-0200 ** Male Dept.: Diagnostics ** Physician: James Wilson ** Person to contact in case of emergency: James Wilson ** Under medical treatment now? No Music * Volunteered Slavery, performed by The Derek Trucks Band - Plays over the scene where Foreman offers Taub the Vicodin * Introitus: Adorate Deum, performed by Alberto Turco & Nova Schola Gregoriana - Plays during the scene where Taub and Foreman, high on Vicodin, are staring at the ceiling * Tootie Ma Is a Big Fine Thing, performed by John Schofield, John Medeski, Billy Martin and Chris Wood - Plays when Foreman hits Taub in the nose. * Tequila and Chocolate, written by Chris Wood and performed by John Schofield, John Medeski, Billy Martin and Chris Wood - Plays as Thirteen sets out the terms of the dare * Les deux guitars (Tzigane Russe), performed by Les Yeux Noirs - Plays as Wilson attempts to steal the dollar from Daria * Alison, written and performed by Elvis Costello - The song Cameron and Chase dance to * Birds and Ships, performed by Billy Bragg, Wilco and Natalie Merchant - Plays as Cuddy searches the hospital * Once in a Blue Moon, performed by Mabel Mercer - plays over the closing scenes Continuity errors Reviews TV.com users gave the episode an 8.8 rating. They picked Jesse Spencer as the Most Valuable Performer. IMDB users gave the episode an 8.9 rating, with 43.4% of users rating it a 10. The episode was rated the highest (9.5) by females under the age of 18, and the lowest (8.3) by males over the age of 45. The Onion AV club gave the episode a B- rating. Polite Dissent rated the episode a B+, but thought that it was a stretch for Foreman to try Vicodin. Medical ethics Goofs * Since the baby was found just outside the maternity ward, it's unlikely that the staff did a proper job looking for it. It's not uncommon for people to go missing in hospitals and staff would be trained to look everywhere they could possibly be. * It also might have been a good idea to check the security tapes. * The baby's bracelet almost certainly would have set off the alarm if it had been taken as far as it did. The alarms are very sensitive and people are often warned to even stay away from the doors of the maternity ward to avoid setting them off. * The type of seizure suffered by Nurse Maldonado, a pilomotor seizure, is incredibly rare even by House's standards. There are only twenty or so reported cases. What Nurse Maldonado appeared to be suffering when Cuddy noticed her staring off into space was most likely a complex seizure, which does affect consciousness, but doesn't include automatic behavior. In addition, people engaged in automatism will only do things they usually do during the course of a day, which wouldn't include putting a baby in a laundry hamper. * The episode doesn't properly describe an ischemic cardiomyopathy. This is a gradual weakening of the heart due to a lack of oxygen (unlike a heart attack, which is caused by a sudden loss of oxygen). Quotes Cast * Hugh Laurie as Gregory House * Lisa Edelstein as Lisa Cuddy * Omar Epps as Eric Foreman * Robert Sean Leonard as James Wilson * Jennifer Morrison as Allison Cameron * Jesse Spencer as Robert Chase * Peter Jacobson as Chris Taub * Olivia Wilde as Remy Hadley * David Strathairn as Nash * Neill Barry as Donald Luzinski * Riki Lindhome as Sarah Luzinski * Vernee Watson-Johnson as Nurse Smits * Shelly Cole as Nurse Maldonado * Riley Thomas Stewart as Walker Luzinski * Dava Krause as Daria * Al Foster as Davies * Tom Billett as Security Guard One * Bobbin Bergstrom as Nurse * Tamara Kelly as Woman Patient (scenes deleted) * David Zahedian as Woman Patient's Husband (scenes deleted) * Reid Gormley as Doctor Two * Baby Luzinski Release Dates * United States - April 12, 2010 on Fox * Canada - April 12, 2010 on Global * Germany - November 30, 2010 * Japan - November 1, 2011 In Other Languages Links * Episode page at IMDB * Episode article at Wikipedia * Episode review at Polite Dissent * Episode page at House MD Guide * Episode page at TV.com * Episode review at Blogcritics * Episode review at IGN * Episode transcript at Clinic Duty * Annotated transcript at Genius.com * Episode page at Aceshowbiz * A list of the music tracks at TuneFind * Episode article at The TV IV * Episode review at Television Without Pity * Episode review at Ticketstubthis * A list of the music tracks from Heard on TV * A list of quotes at TV Fanatic * Episode review at Give Me My Remote * Episode review at the Onion AV Club Category:Episodes Category:Season 6